Transcription
Welcome back to the Creator Spotlight podcast. My name is Francis Zir and for the first time today we are recording in person with Tyler Denk, the CEO and co-founder of Beehive. Uh and also full disclosure, my boss, which is how I was able to convince him to give me budget to record in person. So, if you enjoy this in-person recording, DM Tyler, leave comments on those LinkedIn posts, and maybe we'll get to uh record more of these in person.
Yeah. What's funny is I actually never got that budget request. I think you just booked it, so hopefully.
I I did just book it. Um, you know, that's it's the trust you give me, and so I appreciate that. Um, as we record, Beehive's winter release event is still a mystery. Um, but this comes out about four or five days after it's released. What are the what are the highlights?
What are the takeaways of the winter release event? Should we tell the people what the winter release event is?
We we should tell them. We should tell them what was in it.
So, well, yes, we will definitely do that. I didn't even take a step back. And if you live under a rock or or are unfamiliar with our marketing schemes from the past month or so,
if you haven't read your LinkedIn,
my LinkedIn bio, my title, my Twitter title, everything. Uh, yeah, the winter release event, what Beehive has been known for over the years is that we ship product very quickly. And so me like and I think we'll get to this as well around my own newsletter like half of the company yourself included like has a newsletter on the platform. We're constantly in touch with our users from Twitter and and LinkedIn and like I think we're as in touch with like our end user as anyone and that allows us to get feedback constantly and then consistently understand like if we launch this that solves these problems. we launch this that helps these people. And so we've been in this motion from day one, which is almost four years to the day that we just ship features as quickly as possible. And we'll we'll announce these in like a weekly email roundup. And after a while, it kind of got a little tiring of like, you know, this just like another email dump. It's like a 40% open rate. Some people click, it is whatever. And in looking at the product pipeline, I was like, "Wait, we have like three to four like very tentpole features that are market expanding, very exciting, very flashy." And rather than dripping them out as like the same old same old, what if we were to do a live event that is streaming of us announcing these features and making like a bigger spectacle of what this is. So like the Apple keynotes, like the the classic example, but a lot of other companies have started to adopt that. Um, and so what went from me thinking I was going to create a slide deck and have like my surfboard in the background and just like read through it on Google in my home in my bedroom and just like kind of go through slides presenting these features and like a Google Hangout.
One thing led to another. I was going to be in New York and then most of the PMs that were working on these projects were also in New York and I was like, let's just record this thing live and like actually get like a live shot of us going up on stage and doing like an Apple keynote thing. So, that's the evolution of the winter release event. And if you're watching this and you missed it, go check it out. I don't know what the link is, but it'll it'll we'll drop it in the show notes like what the link where we put everything is.
Um, but what we what we launched earlier this week or last week when you watch this is a bunch of things honestly. So, the the big market expansion thing for us is digital products. Yeah.
And so, we have and and if you are unfamiliar with Beehive, we do newsletters best-in-class better than anyone. We have a website builder. Uh, I think we can compete in the website space by bundling web and email very tightly. We also have paid subscriptions. We also have an ad network to help you monetize. So, when you all add it all up, if you are a creator, you're a business owner, you are creating content for a living, whether you're a publisher, an independent content creator, uh, we really want to be the tools and infrastructure that allows you to build and launch your business and grow faster and make more money. And we already have a lot of those pieces. So the next evolution of that was digital products which could be everything from you have notion templates that you want to sell or you um want to book time which is really interesting. So a lot of people offer like interviews or or 30 minutes of their time to connect with their fans for 50 bucks or or whatever it is or if you're a a fitness coach maybe you meet with someone and you charge them $100 to do like a fitness analysis and like coaching session type of thing. So digital products is like the first thing I think it's a natural evolution of serving the creator and what we call the content economy which we'll get to and like how do you monetize your value and your expertise. Um I don't know if you want me to run through all of the things that we're launching. I think well real quick though I do want to stop on like the fact that like digital products is this net new thing right because when I first joined the company people would ask me what I would do and I would you know kind of jokingly say like I write a newsletter for a company that makes newsletter software and then after a while like this year I guess I would say like oh well like I work I'm like a journalist in house at this company that uh makes newsletter software website software and has an ad network right and so that digital products is like this net new thing um and I think to me it's Like the company is going from obviously went from websites already to these two other things. But it's like the game becomes not just to have like the best in-class newsletter platform, but like it's more moving towards this like operating system for the creator economy, right? Or for the for the content economy, right?
And and you see that through line honestly where I went back to of like introducing Beehive and like what we're known from. It comes from a place of we know our users so well and when they're in my DMs being like, "Hey, like this software is great. I love it for the newsletter. I I have my website host on you guys, but I'm using X platform to sell digital products or I have to integrate this third-party platform to like do this booking and whatever. Now I have [clears throat] multiple logins. I'm like signing into different places. I have two different wallets. It's like hard to like connect all these different pieces. So understanding that these like data points that we get of our users being like I'd love if I can do all of this right in Beehive. Yeah. Well, that's like the market signal of like I think there's a real opportunity there. So digital products we're we're very excited about.
Yeah. Um, this reminds me I I once interviewed another tech CEO who has a digital products company and they had this story about scaling very quickly. The first year was like, you know, a little I forget the exact rate, but I think it was the second year they like doubled up to like 30 million very quickly and then they kind of stalled a bit. And for the first time I thought about this fact that like or this idea that a challenge for any tech company building in the creator economy, right, is is the education gap where like you might saturate at one point the market of like educated people like with Beehive for example, who are knowledgeable enough about growth and about like web design to where they know how to grow an email list and like they know how to invest in meta ads to do that and they know how to make all the decisions you have to make to make like a good-looking website with the Beehive product, Right. Um, and then after a certain point though, like there's a pretty big education gap to [clears throat] to grow your market, right? Um, so I think there's two to me it's like for Beehive to reach that large scale success like yes, you have to expand the product portfolio, add digital products, but it's also like that to me is a major challenge, right? Like how do you how do you help people figure out how to design and sell digital products, right?
Yeah. Yeah. And I think we need to get better at like the outcome based marketing where I think we're really good at saying we just launched this feature and people are like cool. Like if unless they asked for it, they're like, I don't really know what this does or like you leave it to their imagination of
what does that actually mean for me and like how can I use this like new feature that you hyped up to benefit like my livelihood or my business. Yeah,
the evolution of that is like now with Beehive, you can sell you can have charge your fans directly to book time with you, bundle that into an email product, so you're constantly contacting your fans or you could sell a digital product for cheap and understand who those high intent fans are who are interested and a willingness to pay that you can then cross-sell into different like higher ticket items. Yeah. And our platform allows you to do all of that. And so like once you position as that, it's everyone who's thinking about like whether they have a high ticket item that they're selling or digital products or an expertise with like a rapid fan base. You're kind of telling them that we have the tools to support you because you've kind of given them the playbook
or you're inspiring net new things or plays for them to kind of run by creating marketing that's more outcome based. I think we fall into the trap of like new shiny feature this is available today and like people are busy like everyone has their own thing. like it's top of mind for us, but it's not top of mind for like our users that we're emailing. And so like really spelling out like what this unlocks for them to do, I think is like an evolution of product market that I hopefully we do with the winter release event and continue to push on.
Yeah. I mean, going back to what we were talking about about the winter release event earlier and like this being like a moment of like, oh, instead of dripping these all out, kind of like every week we'll release digital products, we'll release the the podcast feature, right? Like all these things. Um, do you think this is something that you want to move towards more generally? Like I've when I I mean my my role now is not so much a marketing role but in the past I've been part of these big releases and it's like oh great we're going to do this thing in 3 months and you kind of like overpromise externally and then like people internally get so rallied up and it's like this organizing forcing function for the whole company of like everybody from marketing to engineering is like coming together to work on this one thing and it's high stress and you're like working too much and it's like you can only really do this maybe twice a year maybe once a quarter at most because people get burnt out and like the novelty kind of disappears. for for the audience for the customers, right? But yeah, I guess I don't know. What how do you feel about this as opposed to like the typical just like weekly release release release?
Well, right now because it hasn't happened, so this is like us in the future. Like I hope it went extremely well and like people love it. Like the reception was great. we we didn't overpromise and underdeliver and that it's something that like we can actually celebrate as like a huge win in like our users and the broader market is like that was all like again my initial idea was to stream this live on a Google hangout with a slide deck in my room and I think that's like maybe what some people are expecting like no one knows like what we're a small scrappy series B startup I think once they see the production value of what we put on I'm hoping that it actually is like a larger than life like we're punching above um our weight um I don't know I I I don't think we're going to like I the constant drip of like constantly releasing features kind of gives and is the perception of like oh they're always looking to make their platform better which is kind of the reputation we've had.
So I see both sides of it. I think we'll go back to constantly releasing features and like dripping them out as they become available because the other the downside of this like big event is like two of these features are actually available today like they're QA they're ready to go. we're actually like withholding them for this like big announcement and I'm someone who like am much more product like get into the market, let your users play with it, you get feedback and you make it so much better and like we only built those features cuz people had already been asking for them. So we're kind of like we already have their solution they've been asking for but like we're withholding it for like 3 to four weeks. Yeah.
Um, but I do what you said and something I think is like you can tell me as as an employee at the company like one of I think my superpowers as a founder is like finding like that rallying cry that can actually get everyone kind of rowing in the same direction.
We're 110 people totally remote across the world so we don't have like the touch points at the water cooler. So, it's like I'm very intentional about massive features. It's they're all ambitious individually. We're going to do a huge production thing. We're doing a marketing thing. Customer support's involved. Sales is involved. Marketing and growth. Um, so I think that's like really fun and it gives something people to like wake up and look forward to.
Even I'm involved. That's why we're doing this.
You know, exactly. Right. So, like it goes all the way down. And so, yeah, I think there's value to both of them, but no, I don't think this is going to be like a monthly thing for us.
Yeah, definitely not a monthly thing. Um, okay. I I'll this will make sense in a second. Bear bear with me. Um, you know, I've had people ask me like or I've also seen people on Twitter say like, why do people say a Substack but not a Beehive, right? And like to me, the very obvious example is Substack is so templatized, right? It's like it's you can customize more nowadays, I think, but it's still like it's going to look basically the same. the format of the email is going to look basically the same. Your your web page is going to look basically the same, right? And so it's very easy to know what a Substack is. It's also the the written style is usually kind of this bloggy column. I'm I'm you know definitely reducing a lot, but that's basically true. And then with a Beehive, that's not really true because you could have some you Arnold Schwarzenegger big customer on the platform. You could have a Creator Spotlight. You could have a Ryan Rodri Garbage Day. there's all these different people producing different styles of content with also different looking newsletters and websites. So, I think long-term, I mean, I don't know, as a marketing tool, it's great for Substack that they have like this Kleenex, right? But I think for creators, it's much better to not be attached to that thing. Not to get too, you know, deep into the bias here, but all that being said, I mean, with introducing digital products and like widening the range of like what a Beehive could be, I think there's probably like a few different versions of like what is a Beehive, but I wonder what you think a Beehive is.
Yeah. Um, well, it it kind of brings me back to like one of my favorite analogies is the Amazon versus Shopify analogy, right? And so to give everyone context, like Amazon is the destination. You go to the Amazon.com website, you go to their app, you buy things. Like rarely do I know what brand I'm actually buying for from on Amazon. I'm just like typing in toilet paper. Find toilet paper. Couldn't care less. Like whatever the brand is, right?
10 bucks. Great.
Yeah. And and then it shows up in an Amazon box. If you have any problem any problems whatsoever, you contact like Amazon customer support. So like they're there for distribution, but Amazon is the brand through and through. um Shopify and like Amazon has millions of third-party affiliates, but like it's Amazon who you go to. You don't go to the third-party affiliates. Um Shopify like you go to websites all the time to purchase from them. You have no idea that they're even built on Shopify. It's purely the tools and infrastructure to actually make online commerce possible for all of these different businesses and put their brand first, their distribution. And there's trade-offs like you have to do your own customer support, you have to like kind of set up your own templates. Um, but there's a lot more customization there and like you kind of own the audience or your customer end to end. And I think that analogy is like very very similar to like the the Beehive versus Substack. Like Substack has a reader destination. They have a mobile app that they push your readers into.
They are cross-posting all the time. So I follow your content on Substack and other similar content is constantly popping up because they are moving into more of a social app. And so where distribution feels like a sugar high for creators cuz you're getting this like new channel of distribution kind of like the early days of Twitter, you're also giving up your brand, your uh your distribution, the control of the audience and like your reader experience and like that's like the complete opposite direction that I want to go in. So we don't say launch a Beehive like it it we are literally the we are Shopify. We are the tools. We are the infrastructure. You come on to Beehive, you launch a website, you launch your newsletter, you sell digital products. We'll talk about some of the other features we're launching for the winter release event, but like we don't want to be known like we want to be in the back just supporting um I think it's more creator friendly. I think you'd see that in like the business model as well. So we don't take a cut of subscription revenue like Substack does and other creator platforms. So I think there's like a a very consistent ethos through and through of we don't want our brand front and center. We don't want to take your revenue. We want to give you the tools where you can build your own successful business and own your customer end.
Totally. Um, okay. Going back to the winter release event and the features release. Uh, when I was looking at the list, what stands out to me is that this is really like a website product swing, right? So, for the web product, there's um digital products, podcasts, AI website builder improvements, website templates, web analytics. That's a lot for the web product. And then for the email product, there's overhauled automations, dynamic content, and an overhauled paid subscription feature, right? Um, it started as newsletters and then we bought Typedream and introduced this much better uh website tool than we had before and then the ad network came before that as well. But I guess why were website and ad builder the correct bets to take after newsletter and like now maybe the next bet is digital products. Why is that the order of bet?
Yeah. Um, the order of bet. Yeah. I I think that for us like the website to me is like the front door to the rest of the creator economy. You kind of have to have like a like web presence and whether it is the the smallest thing you can do which is a link in bio which you missed on the list. We did we did launch a link in bio uh offering as well.
Going to dock my pay for that.
Yeah. So that's that's like very top of funnel, right? like almost every creator who has like a YouTube or an Instagram or TikTok and has like multiple places to send their traffic like Link and Bio there there's quite a few large companies in that space and it's because it is very utilitarian for like these different creators.
Um
Linktree is like a very large or I mean multi-dozens of millions of dollars business, right?
Yeah. And like I don't think we're like we're not trying to be a link and bio tool like I don't think we're trying to actually compete with Linktree at all. Um, it it's more so just like I think it's an add-on feature of our overall offering than like a standalone product. Like we're not like a link in or a link in bio tool. Yeah.
Um
So yeah, I I think that like to me the website unlocked one link in bio like I said digital products. Um, the AI website builder I think is like extremely exciting. You've obviously seen the companies that have launched in the AI space like their revenue their traction. I think lowering the barriers of entry to create really beautiful websites where it used like way back when it was like you hire a you teach yourself which is like untenable for most people or you hire a web developer expensive you go to like a custom shop and like then like there was like brands that came along whether it's like Wix and Squarespace where there's like templates and you can get there but like there's still templates and there's still drag and drop and like there's a lot of like customization you have to do where AI just like totally blew like blew that out of the water where you can like give me a page that looks like this, make it my colors, my font, my like theming and like that becomes possible and you can prompt with like plain English to bring these like different experiences to life. So I think again bringing the barriers down for anyone to have like something they're proud of is like a big focus of ours. Um, so that's the AI website builder. Web analytics is like again it's kind of like just looking at like what is the old paradigm of things.
Yeah. Previously, you set up Google Analytics, you most people don't, that's the other thing. Most people just don't set up Google Analytics and like they would get a lot of value out of like taking the time to set it up, but it's like another platform. It's a pixel. It doesn't fire all the time.
This is the education barrier.
100%. Yeah.
Or or like my my thesis when I started Beehive was like, hey, look, you could have a website on WordPress and you can copy and paste your content into Mailchimp and then if you wanted ads, you can use like these banner ads and like live intent. You can use like third-party web analytics with Google Analytics. You could use a referral program and that's like another third party. You can use Stripe and like start doing like a membership business. And I just named like six different tools and like as like the content creator with like 2,000 readers who just wants to get off the ground. They're like where do I even start? And like I don't know how to do this. Like I'm not technical.
I would never do it myself.
You just wouldn't. So, it's either like a total barrier to entry of like I'm just not going to get started on my content like creator journey because it's not worth the struggle to be able to get there or it's I'm going to try it's I'm going to get frustrated along the way or like me as a content creator I want to spend time creating content not configuring Google Analytics and like the pixel and like double and like QAing that it's firing properly.
Um, so like roundabout way of getting to your question is really just like to me the website is the front door to the rest of what we can do in this creator economy. Um, and I think the the other thing that I've learned with a lot of these content creators is simplicity and ease of use is very important. [clears throat]
And the more third-party platforms you have to like integrate, the more complicated it gets and the less time you're spending actually creating content. And so the more that we can bundle and like what I think our competence is like product excellence, if we can just bring product excellence to all of these different creator tools, bundle them in one solution, I think the all-in-one if done well is a very compelling offering.
Yeah. I mean like the way I tend to define creator is somebody who is creating digital media for distribution on digital platforms. They are somehow growing an audience for that media and then they're somehow monetizing it, right? And I mean what you're describing there is like productizing the growth and monetization aspects through the website. Um, which is like giving then time for the creator to focus on creating. Uh, which brings me to my next question about the content economy. Um, you've been using this term more internally as opposed to the creator economy. Um, we were talking about Brian Morrissey rebooting right before we started recording. He I think calls this the information space. I think it's kind of the same thing as the content economy. Tell me be tell me about uh this term and why you've been using it.
Well, we're we're trademarking that for sure or like in the process of trademarking it. Um, I've like never heard it referred to previously and I don't know where it came from, but like we've been constantly trying >> since we started the company, it's always been very difficult to describe what we do because it started off as newsletter platform, but then when you bundle in like ad network and website and link and bio and digital products, it's like you're actually a lot more than that.
Mhm. And then the other thing we've always struggled with is who's like our classic like startup term like who's our ICP like who are we actually building for and when you look at our customers not only do we have such a wide range of customers we have a wide range of customers who are having tremendous success. So like Arnold Schwarzenegger sends has a million subscribers on his newsletter sends out daily time like Time magazine, The Ringer, Creator Spotlight, myself. Um
Brian Roger, Garbage Day independent journalist now has Oliver Darcy independent journalist. So like there none of those people have anything in common with each other, right? Outside the fact that they create content,
they send emails to for a living. There was there was a time when we would lean into creator economy and then our head of sales is like hey I'm talking to like Baltimore Sun Baltimore banner like uh time the ringer like they are not creators they don't refer to creator economy like when I say the word creator like they're like is this tool even for me and I was like that's a fair point your job is to do enterprise sales and the thing is like we serve those customers extremely well so we don't want to isolate them in like our marketing and language um inversely if we go all the way into like hey we're building for like publishers and whatever else Arnold Schwarzenegger, Kyle Kuzma, like Russell Westbrook, they're like I'm not like a publisher, right? And so like what's like the unifying thing that is underlying all of these and like content economy is like kind of where we landed of a bit more abstract but some purpose of their content or their of their business or um themselves is just creating some sort of content primarily text based in email today, but you mentioned we're launching podcasts as well. um with sneak peek in 2026 like video is definitely on the road map. So you can see like this multimedia thing evolving over time.
Yeah. I mean, at a previous job I was I still give credit to my my old boss who who told me this. He was like cuz I I was in marketing right and he was like Francis we're not competing with other companies like ours. we're competing with anything you can look at on your phone, right? Which I think for a while I've applied that to the creator economy, but I think the content economy is more accurate because whether you're like if you're scrolling Instagram reels, right? I might be seeing something that my friend made, something that some creator I follow made, something that is an ad from a brand, something that is kind of an ad but kind of like entertainment from a creator working with a brand, right? And it's like, does it matter where it came from when it's all like when I'm looking at it all just like scrolling my thumb on the same screen, right? So, I think to me like that's what the content economy is is an acknowledgement of like all of these things collapsing where like even in your in your inbox, right? It's like I might be seeing an email from you. I might be seeing like 20 newsletters that I subscribed to coming in today. I might be seeing like a notification that Natalia has like added a comment to some piece we're working on in the Beehive editor. It's like it's all coming from different places and for different purposes, but like it's all coming to me in the same screen, right? Like
I love the product placement there too when you see when you get a email when someone comments and edits your doc because we do have live collaboration in the editor.
It is very good.
Um
Yeah. Okay. Going back to pre-winter release event besides any of the features that have just just now come out as this is released. Um, what do you think was the most impactful? not even necessarily like flashiest feature this earlier this year, but like what do you think was the most impactful release on the business?
Yeah, great question. I I want to say website, but we just spent so much time talking about website. Um, so I'll go the other big bet that I think you hinted at earlier, which is the ad network. Yeah.
Um,
For me, like my if I were to sum up what do creators or anyone in the content economy really care about? I think there's two things. It's to grow faster and to make more money. Yeah. And if you can do if you can help your users or our creators or or publishers do those things, I think that's like the key to success. Which is why like our initial wedge when we launched four years ago was the Morning Brew referral program worked so well for Morning Brew. Everyone wanted it. That's like a lot of like the idea came from people just DMing me constantly like, "How did you build the Morning Brew referral program?"
It's your claim to fame.
And it literally was my first claim to fame and I was like, "You know what? We're just going to make that default on the product. So if you sign up for Beehive, you have the Morning Brew referral program."
Yeah, admittedly, the referral programs because of that exact reason has become like there's only so many referrals that you can do. So, I think it's become a bit more saturated, but like
that's why we keep releasing new features.
Exactly. And [laughter] so, like like but that was like our DNA from day one is like what's our wedge into the market is like oh like yes, Mailchimp you can send an email and an email is an email. But does Mailchimp actually help you grow any faster? And the answer is no. As do all of these like email platforms? They help you send emails. And so not only do we offer the website, so we're giving you more um and helping consolidate your tech stack, but we help you grow faster and we have whether it's the referrals, recommendation network, boost, like a lot of things to help you grow faster. And then monetizes the second piece of that. And Morning Brew when I left, we were doing like 20 25 million in revenue. And we had like 20 people on the sales team.
And so I saw this engine of like, okay, it's amazing. we're doing 20 million in revenue, but we have like a full staff of people that are like pitching agencies, pitching brands, doing copywriting, uh doing reporting, invoicing, managing advertiser relationships. Your average content creator who's writing about sports like three times a week, they don't, yes, like Nike would be an amazing advertiser for them, but they're one busy writing about sports and they have no business like negotiating with Nike or like they don't know any contacts there. So, if we because we send three billion emails a month, can aggregate demand from advertisers and we work with Nike and Netflix and HubSpot and Roku, can we bring those ad opportunities to these content creators? So, they wake up, they're like, "Oh, I have a Nike ad that's paying me $10 CPM." So, I have to do nothing. I add this ad that adds legitimacy to my business because I have a big Nike logo in it. It's good copy. I know my audience is engaged because one, Beehive knows with all of our first-party data, like we serve ads that we think will perform best. And two, you know, as a content creator that writes about sports, like you would be a great advertiser and then a few weeks later you get uh deposited into your wallet like 500, 5,000, whatever depending on the size of your list, like that's great.
And so like I mean it's not totally novel like YouTube invented this, right? Or or like pioneered the you focus on creating content, we will help bring advertisements. Um, and so while YouTube is like lack of control for the most part, like it's just they'll monetize your video and you get money. It's great. It's handsoff. We're a bit more hands-on where you actually get to see the advertising options and choose which one you want to run. But yeah, I mean I I think we we made considerable strides on the ad network this year. I think we're still like in the first inning of what this ad network can be. I think that's like one of our big like multi-billion dollar bets.
Not to well, not to get too ahead of the skis, but what's like the second inning, third inning of what the ad network looks like?
Well, part of it's just like time in market and scaling. So like the the ad network, we're constantly in a supply and demand market where we either don't have enough publishers and we have too much advertiser demand or we grow really quickly and we publishers are complaining, hey, we need more ads. So like there's constantly just like over time uh getting more publishers and more advertisers and the more publishers we have the big numbers attract larger and larger advertisers which then gets publishers more excited to come onto the platform. Um, we so like to get ahead a bit like right now the way that it operates is every Sunday you get your like slew of like here's the five ads that you have for this week and you can accept them you can decline them but you have to like kind of schedule them. We're moving into a world where it's like real-time ads where you can say as you're writing your newsletter give me an ad. It will give you like the top 10 recommendations for your newsletter specifically and you can choose them on demand rather than having like schedule in advance. So, a lot more control, a lot more optionality. Um, from there, I think like AI like could play a part in this. So, like if we have your entire content library, we know how Francis writes creator spotlight rather than the Nike ad in creator spotlight being the same as every other Nike ad. Can your this one be in your voice and tone based on all of your content, which in theory would increase like the engagement, the click-through rate, and then also how much you're getting paid. Um, so there's like a few of the different things we're talking about, but I think from a broad, not from the creator lens, but from the advertiser lens, most advertisers go to Meta and Google, like the duopoly of digital advertising.
Mh.
And those are like on-platform algorithmic feed, super twitchy, like there's a lot going on. Um, well, in the meta case and and Google just runs the world. But like if we could be the third there like I the first deck I ever made like very ambitious of Beehive.
The first Beehive deck I ever made for a seed is like our competitors one day will be Meta and Google because I want a brand marketer to be like we need new customers. We're AG1 and we want new wellness focused. I'm just giving a bunch of shout outs in this friend.
Free advertising u but they are advertising. So shout out if you're an advertiser you get you get shout out.
Yeah. Yeah. You get shout outs on the pod. Um, if if you're AG1 and you're like hey we need more like health conscious customers or whatever like you're already maxed out on meta you're spending a ton you're spending a ton on Google like can Beehive that third platform where you're like we know that there are so many health conscious readers and newsletters and content being created and right now there's not a way if you're AG1 to go to you could you could manually reach out to hundreds of these newsletters and negotiate one so in like that's so resource intensive it's never gonna work. Well, okay. So, another thing does it become does the marketplace become more like tiered? Like is there like like whether for the advertiser I guess it would be both for the advertiser and the publisher. Do there become like menus of like here's like you know you go to restaurants like here's the cheaper wine, here's the more expensive wine.
Yeah, I definitely like going to get more sophisticated with like all of our targeting and the optionality. The other thing that we actually started tossing out which is pretty interesting. Um, so really very forward and transparent with our roadmap. But like with the launch of digital products, like how cool would it be if you launch a digital product on Beehive and be like I want like it's selling but I want thousands of customers. Can this be an ad?
So like now we have distribution baked in. So you launch a digital product on Beehive. uh say it's like a notion template and you want like uh work I don't even like work efficient like
I mean I've interviewed for example like one that we have on the I don't know if it's on the platform right now but I interviewed um Nicholas Cole from Ship 30 for30 and Premium Ghostwriting Academy earlier this week and I know that they have had um I think both of those products in the ad network maybe just Ship 30 for30 like that's a digital product that has been on the network.
Yeah, so could you launch a digital product on Beehive, you push your audience to it with your own distribution, you're like, "Oh, this is great. It's selling." Could you make that an affiliate offer that then flips to the Beehive ad network? So, if you uh Francis launched like a notion template for how you write, like you're writing notion template for how you create Creator Spotlight and you have these 400,000 people in your email list. Like, if you ever wondered how I create content on like a weekly basis, here's my template. It's $5. Yeah.
And you're like, "Oh, there's like a lot of demand for that, but I only have my 400,000 people in my audience, only 400. Uh, where do I go from here?" Well, if you could be like, I'd like to target anyone else that that creates content in the Beehive ecosystem around creators, then as a creator, I log in to write my newsletter, and if I want to monetize it, I could see an ad from Francis to be like, if I promote this Creator Spotlight template, I'll get paid $3 or whatever it is. So, I think that distribution aspect is really interesting, and that's like where the bundling comes in where I really think we're at the first inning of we did the hard part first. I think email is incredibly hard and I think as we add more and more products you can see how a digital product on like these other platforms you're kind of living in like isolation where with us you flip the 3 billion impressions and you can get a lot of distribution which is like a really unique competitive advantage.
Yeah, I think I mean this goes back to like this portfolio operating system for the creator economy right where it's like you're not necessarily forced to use any of these things you can just have like the email product but those other things are available and like synergistic with the email product. Um, you said only 400,000 subscribers with Big Desk Energy your newsletter this today as we record. You hit only 120,000 uh subscribers. You do this um both I think cuz you like it. You you're a good writer and you it's it's dogfooding, right? You're you're using the tool so you understand the customer better. Um, how did you hit 120,000 subscribers? Was it like a mix of meta ads, boosts, and just organic?
A lot of organics. like I didn't put any money into it for like the first 20 25k subscribers and like we'll talk the book like a lot of Beehive native features right so uh every piece of content that I write has an email gate on it so in order to read it you have to put in your email and so I'll promote it on X I'll promote it on LinkedIn I'll promote it on like whatever other channel it gets people's interest they click on it they have to put in their email so like that's not like a a silver bullet but like it adds to like a few dozen subscriptions every time I do it
uh I do have a referral program that works decently well. I connected to like dropshipping and like digital goods. I have a lot of lead magnets as well. So, I'm very transparent about like this whole building in public persona. And so, I built or like the deck that I built for our seed round and our series A and our series B like if you're interested in that. So, you're a founder. Again, it all comes back to understanding who your audience is. For me, my audience is like founders and so like what do founders actually want? Like if I'm thinking about leaving my job and starting a business, how do I raise money as like a seed round is very interesting to me. So, if Tyler shares me talking in third person, shares like this lead magnet to
Put in my email and I get the actual C deck. Yeah. Unedited, totally raw that like he raised $2.5 million for. That's interesting. So, like lead magnets work a lot. Um, you've got your uh the investor updates one, right, where it's like I think it's on a on a 2-year delayed track.
Yeah. Just because I started it later, but yeah. So, I I sent ever since we launched the business, I've sent a monthly investor update and it ended up just being like and like one day maybe it's a book, I don't know. Um but like it's this really like beautiful and like uh vulnerable journey of like every month of like oh [ __ ] this is this is a rocket ship we're very unmediated guy you lay it out there and so it's like this is a rocket ship this is amazing to holy [ __ ] like that that sucks like but it's the entire journey with the numbers and like so I had all this content I was like again what would a founder be interested in like I think the investor updates are incredibly helpful so one of my lead magnets is you put in your email and every month you get a investor update from me as if you invested at the very beginning and you kind of follow the journey unfold.
So I think that's like really like creative and differentiated type of like lead magnet.
Yeah.
Uh recommendation network works great. I think I have like 4 or 500 different publishers promoting big desk energy which is which is one of them. Thank you. What else do we have? Uh the boost network. I put a little bit of money into boost and then there is a point with like paid like with newsletters where like you have to invest into paid whether that's like meta or Google. And so I've done a little bit of all of that. And yeah.
I think I mean going back to my question of like what is a beehive? Again, I think there's a lot like there is the larger publisher using it. There's like the famous person very well known. You listed a few of those. Um and then like what you're doing though is sort of the individual creator version of what is a beehive, which is to say like you are using all of these different features in different ways. You are also like um you're not a paid subscription product. you are monetized through ads, which I whenever I've like described people, if somebody asked me about like a beehive versus a Substack versus a Mailchimp or whatever, right? I'm like the the DNA you have to understand of Beehive is that it comes from you working at this company that was um a an advertising based company, right? So, it's like the DNA of Beehive comes from you building that and then coming here and like a Beehive then is there might be a paid subscription option, but it's going to be monetized through ads. there's going to be lead magnets because it like there is this sophistication about growth, about monetization, about like turning this thing into kind of a working business. So, I think I mean that's kind of the point of you doing it too is to like have this like prime example of here is a thing you could build on Beehive.
Um, you acquired a newsletter at one point, right? That was part of your growth. what I don't know like how many subscribers you had when you did that, but I'm also curious of like how you integrated that because I've you know I've talked to a few people on the pod who've acquired other newsletters or been acquired and I know that it like like it's a little I don't know if tricky but there's like some measures you have to take in like integrating those lists and making sure people don't like mass unsubscribe and then your investment was kind of worthless.
Tell me about that acquisition.
Yeah, you really did your research. One I didn't even I didn't even think I publicized that I acquired this newsletter.
You did. You definitely did.
Oh did I? Yeah.
Okay. [laughter]
I mean, if you did it, we could we could cut that.
No, no, it's all good. I would just have Yeah. I've never been confronted about it. Uh I think I was at like 20,000 subscribers and it was like pretty early on and it was more of like someone who was building in like kind of a similar space being like, "Hey, like I have this list of 5,000 subscribers. Like it's really engaged. My work's busy. Like there's a lot going on. Like I just don't think I'm going to carry this on. Love your content. Would you want to buy it?"
Uh you kind of figure out like a price per like subscriber. Yeah. Um, again, it wasn't like a ton of money, nor was it like a ton of subscribers, but like if I was already open the door to like I'll pay $2 per subscriber on Meta. Like, what would I pay to get 5,000 somewhat engaged subscribers? There's obviously like a discount there of like to your point, not everyone's going to opt in. Not everyone's going to convert. Some people are going to miss the announcement that like you're now subscribed to this other thing and be like, "What the hell is this?" and like mark spam. Yeah. So there's not like an exact science to it, but like the the traditional playbook if I was going to put on like my email deliverability had here. Well, one, the acquisition. Two, I think best practice would be in the old list within the old email, you announce like, hey, like this newsletter has been acquired by X and you will now start receiving big desk energy every Tuesday and then you add like some hype. It's written by Tyler. He's a co-founder of the company. Like my newsletter was on this platform. I think you'll personally like love this.
We did this a bit when I started writing creator spotlight. We did this whole thing of like here's a note from Tyler. It's like I'm the founder of Beehive and Francis is doing this thing now. Blah blah blah. Like yes, it's still we rebranded it, but you want to get out like I think where people get in trouble is they just like take they download the CSV, they have 5,000 new emails. They just throw it on their email and like now you have like 1/5if of your list being like what one? What is this? I never signed up for this. Like you just kind of set it's like a little scummy as well. It also might be illegal. So something around there like it's not best practice. So best practice would be like from the old email sender like full disclosure got acquired this is what they expect hype up the new person like what they're getting and then what you what you t there's like an opt-in versus opt out thing one is prefer depends on how like what your risk tolerance is the the most like uh white hat way to do it would be if you want this newsletter that just got acquired or just acquired us click this button and we'll automatically add you but you can assume like clickthrough rates are 1 2 3%. So you bought this whole asset and like 3% of the list actually decided that they want that. So like that's what like our deliverability subscriber has just gone up a lot. Like that's what like what email deliverability experts would recommend and it's like definitely the most like above board thing to do is like disclose it and let them say, "Oh, I signed up for this. It's no longer that." So you have to kind of resubscribe and get consent.
Yeah.
I I'm like a little bit more grayhead in that area. I would be like, "Hey, if you're like totally out and don't want this new newsletter, click this button and we'll remove you and you'll never hear from us again." like maybe 500 to like a thousand people opt out cuz like they didn't sign up for that initial newsletter. Totally fine. But everyone else who did not click that button, you just assume they're good. That's consent and you kind of move them over.
Um, again, like the scale that I was doing at like 5,000 subscribers, like it's like pretty low-key and fine. And I and like my content's great. So like it's honestly a gift that they read everyone. Yeah.
Uh [laughter] I uh I was listening to another podcast you did recently where you're talking about your routine and you know you wake up at 5:00 a.m. you you meditate for 20 minutes, you go to the gym, all this stuff. You unblock people on the East Coast cuz you're on the West Coast. Uh I've got the whole spiel down. You go to bed at 9:00 p.m. Um the point is like I think you still you write everything in the newsletter yourself. It's something that is important to you. You enjoy doing it. You are a good writer. Um where does that fit in your priorities? Cuz I think like I've interviewed people like Tommy Clark, former guest of the pod. uh he runs an agency that a a major product of theirs is helping executives write for LinkedIn, right? And they they'll do some ghost writing, they'll like do some, you know, interview them and turn it into content. But the point is is it's like it's hard to find time to do to do that. Well, it's so so it's only more and more competitive like how good content is on any given platform. Obviously, there's the aspect of like it looks good for you as the CEO of this company to use the product, right? Where does it sit in your priorities? Like I imagine you're spending a good amount of hours per week on this.
Yeah. I mean, if behives is 99% of my priority, this is like where the last 1% comes in and like everything else about life kind of falls after that.
Um, [laughter] which is is not much left over.
Um,
no, I mean I joke that's like the bane of my existence cuz like writing like I think I'm an above average writer, but it doesn't come easily. like these these newsletters take 5 to 10 hours depending on like what topic I'm writing about like the the mood and like how motivated I am to write and like how important of a piece it is. Is it just like another weekly one or am I getting a bit more aggressive one or two I've given you edits you some have to call in the big dogs and make sure that we actually have some edits going on in there.
Um so yeah, I mean for me like an ideal workflow is one thing that I've learned is like I have this running notepad on my Apple Notes. I could write a list of like these are interesting topics I think I have a very opinionated stance on this I think people would enjoy this and then I put it in that notepad I'm like I'll come back to it in a few weeks and when you come back in a few weeks you have no inspiration like that moment passed like you had a lot to say at the time and like you're trying to like force up those emotions again like it's just not there and so I have learned that like once that inspiration strikes like find your computer as quickly as possible And even if it's the worst rough draft, which all it'd be funny I want to do this like share my first draft of something and then share the finished product. It is so unrecognizable idea for a future issue when you're feeling too lazy.
It is so unrecognizable. Like how my first rip at all of these are terrible. They're they're bullet point list. There's runon sentences. I end up cutting like 80%. Um, there's no narrative whatsoever. And that's what takes a lot of time. Like I I an ideal for me is I have inspiration Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and I spend 30 minutes writing the worst rough draft, but like all the thoughts are there kind of like the ice sculpture that I can like carve out later. Yeah.
And then like I'll try to take an hour on Friday and I'll just run through it.
Uh here I am on Friday afternoon. I have not I have no idea what I'm writing about next week. And
you got like four days,
right? But I don't. So like that that's where like the the the more that I've realized that I wait till like Sunday to start writing like the difference in product when I actually get the first version out on like a Wednesday and Thursday and I can revisit it five separate days just to check in for 30 minutes and tweak things. The final product is so much better than if I wait till Sunday and I get one read through on Monday and try to cram it in.
Yeah.
Um, so that's like my I mean the benefit of having a weekly newsletter is like I only really need one um once a week. I to that end of like getting down the the rough draft. One thing I've I haven't done this that many times, but at least like three or four times is I was I was like stuck on something. I was like, I got to go get groceries anyways. So, I went to the grocery store and then like I'll just like take out my phone and like talk into voice notes like as I'm like, you know, grabbing some beans off the shelf or whatever.
Um, I yeah, I recommend getting going in going just go somewhere in public, walk around and just talk to yourself or your phone. Uh, it really helps.
Um, okay. If this is the bane of your existence, what's the endgame? Do you have to kind of just like keep writing this newsletter until Beehive is like
that's why I say like I joke that it's the Bane cuz the the upside has been incredible, right? I think one I've gotten so much closer to the product.
You also you make money doing it?
Yeah, I run ads on it so like I've made money. I I have like a founder mastermind thing. So, like knowing that my audience is founders, like I've actually hosted these masterminds in Costa Rica where I invite like 10 founders and one, it's like revenue. Two, it's like an amazing opportunity to like network with people that I want to meet. I've even invested in some of those companies from people that I that I've met through that. Oh,
you spent money. Yeah. [laughter] Exactly.
So, like it's been like the newsletter. I think it's like the perfect case study too of like how valuable putting your thoughts out on the internet is and actually growing this following of people and like providing value to like this this cohort of founders.
Yeah.
Um, so it's been incredibly door opening if that's a noun or adjective.
Newsletters open doors.
Yeah, sure. We'll work on that.
Um, it's been so valuable honestly. And so like I I dread it every before writing it. I dread every second of it and as soon as I like finally fi finish finish it and do my last read through I go that was [ __ ] awesome.
I mean, that's kind of the feeling I and then like as soon as it goes out I feel that was awesome and then about an hour later I'm like god that sucked. That was horrible.
You know it's that was awesome and you check the replies and like people are like eating it up. You're like oh that was like a great piece. Like people are like I found so much value in this. And then like an hour later you're like what am I going to write about next?
Exactly. Exactly. The high the high uh does not last long. um in like I don't know conversations you've had with with customers recently or like potential customers, what are people asking for and demanding? Like what's I mean maybe this is stuff that we're filling the gap with the winter release. I don't know, but yeah, what are you hearing from customers or potential customers that people really want or need or what are their challenges that they're facing?
Yeah, I think I'd like to think that most of them are being addressed in the winter release. So podcast is a big one, right? I think the overlap of people who are creating content online and have a newsletter and also have a podcast like there there's yeah exactly you yourself a great example of that like can we bundle that host your podcast uh be able to aggregate it and then you bundle that with like a link in bio now you have like this full 360 view of you send people to your link in bio you can see how many people are clicking and listening to your podcast but also who's opening and clicking on your emails who's visiting your website so I think this like analytics layer with podcasts are like very interesting in addition to everything else that we're offering. Uh, videos come up a lot more.
Um, and I'm trying to sus like the signal from the noise of like like we're not going to replace YouTube. We're not trying to be Tik Tok or or reals. So like where does video fall into our ecosystem and it's easy for that like the hard part about my job is like I hear so many feature requests and complaints every day and it's like what actually is something we should be doing and that solves a real problem that I think we're like uniquely positioned versus like it's so easy for like a random user be like hey love video you should have video and it's like I don't know wouldn't you rather just post your video on YouTube cuz like they
I mean the whole reason I mean we're recording this in person we got high quality video here the whole reason we do This is because YouTube has a great distribution engine and originally the podcast was just audio and then we started doing video because YouTube is
and we're seeing like those are the trends that you're kind of seeing. Spotify recently which I'm totally going to butcher so I'll ignore the number but some large percentage of people actually prefer to watch their podcast on YouTube which you've seen
and like for me like podcasts for me are like while I'm cooking while I'm driving so it's like a total audio thing
shout out to the people watching this though we love you
yeah yeah we do love you [laughter]
um but yeah yeah so like and so like Spotify has seen that they've gone very deep on like video podcast as well as and and so I think I don't know trend like that's also what's really interesting is like consumer trends are constantly changing and so how do we understand how behaviors are changing of how people are consuming content and be on the forefront of like being able to empower users to do more of what they want to do. So videos come up a bunch I just haven't like exactly squared like where it fits into the platform and why you would rather post on a behive hosted website your video versus YouTube or Tik Tok or or shorts. So
yeah, I mean for me personally, I do not currently see a reason I would want a video product native in Behive. I'm fine with YouTube, but I guess like the reason would be something like Wistia, which I've used in the past in a marketing job, right? Where it's like you use that instead of YouTube as an embed on your website because it has like really great data of like, you know, when people stopped watching and I don't remember. I haven't used it in a while, but I So I guess it's a very specific type of user. Um, because we definitely don't you don't want like you don't need beehive to host your video. I don't know maybe
yeah [laughter] there like two other ways to look at it too. I think large publishers they like to monetize both website and video and there's like YouTube monetization may not be as favorable if you self-host and do your own sort of ads or like there's alternatives to video where you can monetize more.
And then the other one is if you have a paid subscription offering and this is something I think Substack's done a pretty good job with is you can actually put you can payw wall your video at a certain point of the video. So if you have a paid subscription product and want to do some sort of video where you know a free reader or subscriber could get 2 minutes of the video but then there's like a hard payw wall like that has been effective for certain content creators.
Well this is too where Substack is like I mean it's no longer we don't need to like rehash this a lot but it's no longer really a newsletter product. Right. It's like Twitter Patreon with a newsletter feature.
Yeah. Right.
That's a good way to describe it.
Yeah. I mean like what you're describing there is like is like a Patreon feature of like these these these pay walls, right? like Patreon's maybe the most is like the Kleenex of that kind of thing, right? So, it's like how much do we need to compete on that front versus like going into like the you know with a web builder competing with like other web builder tools, right? Like I don't know. I don't think that's our arena.
Yeah. No, I I agree. And so like it's evolving and like I'll never say never. Like another thing that's randomly come up a lot for enterprise users is like SMS. Uh, which is really interesting to me and like it kind of goes back like who is our end customer. For me as like a consumer I hate SMS like I don't give any brands my phone number um inbox zero both in like email but definitely and like iMessage so
like there was a time where Chipotle had it and they would send me like free guac text and like I would like that every now and then um but like then even that got annoying because they like brands really like the thing that marketers love to promote is like oh email has like a 30% open rate but SMS is like a 99% open rate. So yeah, people open it because it's obnoxious to have unread messages. But when Chipotle started texting me two times a day, I'm like, I'm out. Like I don't need this.
Well, the first case study I've seen of this from a newsletter I follow um you familiar with Tangle?
Yep.
Yeah. So I think I forget I'm going to forget all the details, but about a week or two ago as we record um in one of their emails, they said that they were going to start introducing an SMS service as like a perk for premium subscribers. And I'm pretty sure Isaac Saul, the the guy who runs Tangle, I think he framed it as like this is a way of us getting ahead of like possible future inbox disruption, right? Which, you know, AI summary summarizing um whatever newsletter. It's like, oh, you wrote this long thing, doesn't matter. They're just going to read the summary. I think he framed it as that. It's like an experiment. You know, we'll see. But it's like, I wish I could remember exactly what it is. Maybe producer Tom will put an overlay on the screen if you're watching. To me, that's so interesting because like I maybe I'm naive, but like the AI summaries in inbox, I don't think of replacing quality content cuz one, they're not that good and they'll get better for sure, but like an AI summary can only do so much summarizing. Like when I read creator spotlight, like I want your full taken analysis, the creator economy like and a one-s sentence summary isn't giving me the value that I need.
Yeah. if well if I to be sure if I didn't do a good job and I'm just like you know it's like a 10,000 words when it should have been a hundred words like maybe it replaces that but like the idea is you're you're like putting care into the product and it's
I think like the the like so going back to like what made morning brew special and then every newsletter wanted to be morning brew for X for crypto for AI for healthcare like I think if you're just recapping news like that is where I might be worried of like whether it's an AI summary or just other forms of like news aggregation could disrupt that.
But if you are following a creator or an expert who has like an actual opinion and take an analysis on something like I love Ben Thompson for like strate like I read all I it must be like 3 4 thousand word emails are so long but like I'm very curious about his take and I respect his opinion and perspective and it's about spending the time with it not just like getting the fact and moving on. It's about immersing yourself in It's like, yeah, sure. I could I could get an AI summary of what Meta's earnings look like and I can get the numbers like, oh, they beat earnings because of this. And like I could read that in 10 seconds, but like Ben has a decade plus of like doing this earnings analysis and understanding the broader ecosystem with like really opinionated takes of like the tech economy essentially. And like that's why I pay $15 a month to read his take. And so like I think the more again like go I'm not gonna put myself in the same category as Ben Thompson but like my the content that I'm creating is like the behindthe-scenes stories of building this company you really can't get like a summary like you can't have that
you have you have a strong voice in your writing too right and like that's that that's important to stand out in
and I think so like the underlying theme that I'm trying to get at is like I think if you're worried about like AI summaries disrupting your actual content like you need to lean more into like what is my unique perspective or voice that makes people seek me out as a content creator. Um, and I think with AI in general, you'll see more slop and more like more just garbage created. So, I think people's willingness to shift back towards like human created content because that person is smart or respectable or entertaining is like where creators are going to shine more in the future. I think leaning into that is like where you find like more competitive advantage.
Totally. No, I agree. I mean like as the amount of as the amount of content increases, as the amount of lowquality content increases, quality content only increases in value.
Not to say Tangle Tangle is very high quality. So like but but that's I mean that's just like they're just taking a protective measure, right? Like and I think I think it's going to be like kind of I don't know if it's going to be summaries of of what they covered that day or like links out to the thing that they covered that day cuz that sound like worse like I I'm just trying to imagine how I consume iMessage, right? one I don't like I I don't I don't I don't want content like flooding into like my text messages like those like personal conversations for planning friends or like
I've gotten a few like uh you know political fundraising texts recently and I just kind of like open it and slide out as as fast as possible. as much that email gets [ __ ] for like the limitations like you can't embed video like you have to link out and like it's like a it's an open protocol that's fairly dated and it's been around for a while like SMS is more restrictive right you can't add like images you can't inline stuff you can't style anything so like maybe SMS which is also an open protocol like evolves in some capacity but to me it feels like I don't know again like I I I'm fairly opinionated and for the right type of business SMS is effective for certain things for the content driven businesses that I think is like our ICP. I understand people's uh cur curiosity with SMS. I personally as a consumer just don't see it. So, I'm opinionated like
Well, it's kind of like with with really long tweets, right? It's like that classic reaction image like I'm happy for you or sorry that happened, whatever. Like I'm not reading that.
Exactly. Right. Like I don't I I will never read a very long tweet. If you put that in a newsletter or on a web page, I'll read it, but like I I just that's not the medium for me to ten off. I remember when they first launched that as like this like new like fora into like long form media and I I hated it then I hate it now. Like it's like I think the beauty of Twitter was like in the 280 characters like it makes you a better writer to be able to like brevity [clears throat] to to be able to actually boil your thoughts down to something into 280 characters that like can convey information or be entertaining. I think there's like a real skill to that to become a better writer. And I think that was like the beauty. If if you scrolled through your Twitter feed and every post was like paragraphs long, like it sounds terrible.
No, that's that's why I have like the New York Times app, right?
Exactly. [laughter]
Um, as we add all these features to Beehive and it becomes like less just the creator economy and more the content economy and you've got all these different sizes and business models uh swimming in the same pool, right? like how do you make sure that all parties are kind of left satisfied with the product?
Yeah. I mean, that was kind of like the initial thesis too, is like how what I learned from the morning brew days was we were sending 4 million emails every like an email newsletter to four million people.
Yeah.
But the people who were contacting me on like LinkedIn and Twitter being like hey what tech are you using like how can I use this like morning brew ecosystem which was like the impetus for beehive. They were independent journalists with like 20 like 250 subscribers to hobbyists that were starting like an arts and crafts newsletter for their friends. And it's like the fact that Morning Brew is this massive 4 million email subscriber list like a full like content production the same output and design and features were wanted by like these very small content creators kind of told me that like
the underlying like everyone wants what like the the big dogs have. It's like kind of follow the leader. And so like that's always been my philosophy like we're building and like in the democratization of tools that kind of overplayed but like
Morning Brew was all customuilt in-house like me, Ben and like a few other engineers helped build all of this tech and that's like was like the welloiled machine that made everything work. And so most content creators and journalists don't have access to the type of like enterprise tools that we had built in cuz it took us three years to build it. Mhm.
And so I think always building for like the most advanced use cases and the most enterprise users is like where we're focusing our time knowing that even if you have 10 subscribers, your admiration and and like you are inspired by the big players and like that's who you want to be more like.
You build the complexity and you simplify it at the point of the application which is the hard part, right? We arguably because we have this like rotating uh this revolving door of features every week. We actually have so much functionality that like in the early days people would turn because we didn't have this feature and we didn't have this feature. Now people turn because we have like too many features. So it's like a product and design problem to be like, how do you understand the complexity or like the the uh the maturity of this user to be able to show them the right features at the right time in their customer journey. And that's like a whole different challenge.
Yeah. Um, this is reminding me of my personal favorite feature released this year, which was the like latest post performance module in the dashboard, like part of the dashboard uh the dashboard overhaul because like I track every issue of Creative Spotlight. I have like a big spreadsheet with like all the metrics that we're interested in. Um, and I record that like, you know, 3 days after each send. Uh, but what that little module does is it like it basically allows me to instead of like having to go in and look at like, okay, looking at these 10, like let me highlight these cells, what was like the, you know, the average, what was the max, what was the minimum open rate in this period of time. It's like it's all right there, right? Um, I don't know. I think that's a great example of that, which obviously there's like cues taken from from other apps.
Do you think that was like a I mean that was I really like that one.
I I love it. It's one of the most like widely shared features are like screenshots now. It's the first thing I do. Like Tuesday, I send my newsletter at like 5:00 a.m. Pacific time. Go to the gym, come back, and like I'm like anxiously like nervous to like refresh it. It totally changes my mood for the day. Exactly. If it's like So, for context, we we rank your most recent post relative to the last 10 posts by open rate.
By open rate. So, like I've had some days where it's 10th out of 10 and that's like [ __ ] Like I just put that was like one of my best pieces. I put all this time into it. It's like literally performing the worst out of my last 10 posts. Flip side, sometimes I refresh, it's like number one and you ride that high all day long.
Yeah. Which I I mean open rate obviously this is something I think about a lot is like was the open rate there a function of like a like the audience just got tired of the content recently because it was lower or was it just that like my subject line was not you know hookie enough wasn't click didn't didn't click like is it deliverability like is there something else going on? Yeah. I mean, email's the wild west, which is why I always say it's like I'm glad we started with like what I think is the hardest thing to do.
There's so much between deliverability, security, fraud, IP addresses, DNS, like there's a lot going on under the hood. Not to discount like these other like creator, but like video is very hard too, I'm sure.
Um, but yeah, no, email, emails, it's amazing and it sucks at the same time.
Yeah. Okay, going back to this like the morning brew of X, we were talking about that a second ago. I think at the beginning of Beehive, obviously that was like your reputation, your pedigree. Um that was that was like the oneliner pitch. Beehive, build the morning brew of XYZ.
Um, is that still the pitch or like what's the new the new pitch?
Yeah. So when I do and I've brought up ICP quite a few times because like it's very top of mind for us like as the winter release event happened just last year, it's like the startup CEO's boogeyman.
Yeah. It's just like we've just did like this massive market expansion of who we can serve. And so then you like again going back to like our biggest problem of a business when it's Arnold Schwarzenegger and time and Oliver Darcy and me it's like like who are you actually like when you go to like Facebook ad manager like who are you actually targeting like who do you want to get in front of? It's a really hard problem when like your answer is like, "Oh, anyone can use our software." And while that can be true and everyone can use our software, at some point as like a growth team, we have to be like, "But this is like
I'm not anyone. I'm Francis and this is what I do, right?
This this is our like segment of like we know there's a big market there. We know we can serve them better than anyone and like we know where to find them. So like that's who we're going after. And the morning brew for X is like when I look at all of our ICPs like what we actually do own because like I did this whole analysis of like whether it's an independent journalist, whether it's a big publisher, whether it's like a digital entrepreneur and then like what are the tools that they're kind of using today and like how do we enter that picture and the one that was the hardest to like say who else are they using is actually like the morning brew for X because that was our pitch for a long time.
And so I actually think we not own that space but like that's our core competency. Yeah.
The thing is when you look at like TAM, I don't think that's the biggest of all those because there's only so many people who are going to make those businesses and those businesses will only be big enough with, you know, so many subscribers that pay so many so much and behind fees, right? So that's where I think you loop all the way back down to like content economy and like is it this like digital entrepreneur? I created this like new diagram of like the spectrum of like hobbyist to like outcome oriented like digital entrepreneur and like we skew very much on like to the right side of that where it's not like you're not just writing content for content sake like maybe you're an independent journalist maybe you love writing maybe it is a hobby for you and like we can serve them as well but I think we want the people who like want to grow faster they they're writing content but they also want to monetize it do they want paid subscriptions do they want ads is it top of funnel to drive them into a course or to a digital product. So, it's like this outcomebased entrepreneur and writer where they're using content as a means to an end to build a business around it is like kind of like what we're getting at. It's a lot of buzzwords there, but like yeah, that's kind of like what it's a work in progress, right? And I and truthfully, we're recording this before the winter release event. So, it's
how does that land? What does adoption look like? And where do we see like this huge uptick ideally in adoption of a certain new feature that we launch so we can double down and continue to build? Because again like my core compet like what I believe our core competency is like we ship product better than anyone else. Yeah. We are so deep in with the users and understanding their problems and use cases. So if we just continue to double down on that and ship product better than anyone else. I'm like very bullish on the future of the business.
I think we'll end it right there Tyler.
Cool. That's good.
Thank you for Thank you for coming on. Um, also listener, uh, if you liked this Inerson conversation, whether you watched it or whether you're listening to it and you noticed the energy was better, DM me, DM Tyler, tell him I need budget for a full-time studio and we'll do more of these. Thank you very much.
Or if you're a listener and whether you're watching or listening, if you sign up for Beehive and purchase a plan, we'll have more revenue to get Francis's studio.
Now, there we go. That was a good plug. There we go. [laughter] All right, thank you for listening. We'll see you next week. Cheers.
If you enjoyed the episode with Tyler and are looking for something else, I recommend this episode with Adam Biddome. He co-founded a newsletter called Mindstream, built it to $30,000 a month in revenue, and then sold it to HubSpot all within 17 months. It's a good episode. Give it a listen.